Drupal: 10 Years Later #drupalcon [March 21, 2012]

Later today, Acquia is releasing an infographic that illustrates 10 years of Drupal growth, from the dorm room to the boardroom — and we got an exclusive early look at Acquia's look back.

Since its creation in a dorm room back in 2001, Drupal has grown into a community of thousands of users from around the world. Acquia's infographic helps illustrate exactly how impressive Drupal's growth and community involvement have been.

Drupal Matures

This week at DrupalCon, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert gave the first keynote. In his talk, Buytaert set the tone for the week's events, which have a strong focus on mobile and the user experience. Buytaert says that Drupal 7, which was adopted faster than any previous Drupal release, has reached the maturity phase of its growth. Drupal 8 is planned to roll out in August next year, and according to Buytaert, we can expect great things from the next release. Buytaert wants to win hearts and minds, and to do that, Drupal needs to continue to be innovative, particularly when it comes to mobile.

Talent Pool

Although 16,000+ developers continue to improve Drupal, there's still a talent shortage. In fact, Acquia addressed the issue last year when the company announced Acquia U, a training and placement program for Drupal developers.

Yesterday I spoke with Bryan House, Vice President of Marketing at Acquia about the young training program. House says that eight new developers are in the Acquia U program, and currently they are going through six weeks of rotations through the engineering, customer support and professional services groups. He says the next iteration of the program will start in September, and Acquia hopes to extend the training program to the company's partners in the near future.

Drupal Stats

Drupal now boasts more than 1,400 themes on Drupal.org and 15,000 available modules, with availability in 181 languages. DrupalCon events have been held in Amsterdam, Portland, Antwerp, Brussels, Sunnyvale, Barcelona, Boston, Szeged, Washington D.C., Paris, Copenhagen, San Francisco, Chicago, London and Denver. Forty Drupal developers attended DrupalCon in Antwerp back in 2005, whereas 3,000+ developers gathered in Denver this week.

Buytaert says he wants Drupal to win hearts and minds, but according to its success laid out in an infographic, Drupal already has.